LONDON — For most of us, the older we get, the more we slow down physically. But for some, growing old also means slowing down socially — so much to the point that some home-bodied seniors go days with little to no human interaction. A new survey of British elders sheds light on this sad, but true effect of aging, noting that hundreds of thousands of people often go a week without speaking to a single person. From: www.studyfinds.org
A “week”,…really? Eh,…it can be months without an actual conversation. Once again “Studies” by young people without an actual clue get it totally wrong,…I really don’t like them.
Speaking briefly to store clerks or doctors I’m afraid does not count as social contact. Neither is an email or a comment on FB a conversation. I went from March through to July without contact. I had one on my birthday in early July. Old friends my last friends invited me over for that day. At this point I’ve had none since August…the 16th I think. It’s the middle of November. I may have another on Thanksgiving…not sure.
These last years has been much like solitary confinement regards actual human contact. It’s waiting for you. This very living death you care nothing about is here, and waiting. This will be so much worse when you become an elder. This since you will do nothing to change anything that leads to or causes this cruel empty existence.
Nothing. You don’t care. You do not believe you will get old.
That or you think you’re going to be rich, and insolated from it…you most of you will not. Many once comfortable people are now very alone as elders. Some are also sometimes going hungry,…so will you.
You have my condolences.
I have to agree Sidney. It's a huge problem and particularly among the elderly. But the young too are becoming more and more socially isolated. We have disasters closing in on us from all sides.
ReplyDeleteThe young have time. We do not. I try to have sympathy for them.
ReplyDeleteThey're new to a world they don't understand, and are victimized by. They have intimate physical needs that are madness inducing. Hence murder, and rape extreme politics left right is typical for them.
But they have time,...if they don't kill themselves or each other.
On the whole these are not the problems of elders.
We mostly want to be left in peace with what remains of our social networks. The tragic element is those networks are slowly deconstructing themselves around us. It fades to mist before our eyes.
All to the background soundtrack of intoxicated horny violent selfish illiterate youths at the direction of the middle-aged burning down the world.
"The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization." – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Delete"It's always been assumed that the evolutionary slope reaches forever upwards, but in fact the peak has already been reached, the pathway now leads downwards to the common biological grave. It's a despairing and at present unacceptable vision of the future, but it's the only one." -J. G. Ballard, "The Voices of Time", 1960
...or so you keep saying.
ReplyDeletePity of it is it's actually far so very far worse.
I wish I had your optimism.